


Self-Righteous Suicide

by LyricalMelody



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adasheith (implied), Allurancelot (implied), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Hunk (Voltron) Whump, Hunk (Voltron) has Depresssion, Pidgina (implied), Really this is just a lot of Hunk being down on himself, Self-Esteem Issues, Suicidal Thoughts, but also sorta just, my thoughts on that alternate ending of s7 they talked about, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-22 07:02:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18983323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyricalMelody/pseuds/LyricalMelody
Summary: Hunk knows very well how the world operates.He knows how things go for people like him.It's never good, but at least he has this choice he can make.





	Self-Righteous Suicide

He wasn’t entirely sure how it had started, these feelings. Even back in the Garrison as a cadet, Hunk had had waves of hopelessness overwhelm him at times. Whether it was from tests or just expectations, over having to go into the air despite his wish to remain on the ground, he felt as if his situation couldn’t get any better.

He had Lance, who outwardly seemed happy as could be, but Hunk could see where the mask cracked, where Lance didn’t seem all that much happier than he was, what with being in the cargo pilot class. Being loud and outgoing didn’t necessarily mean one made friends easily, but Lance fared better than Hunk himself did.

He had to have custom uniforms, because he was too large for the typical cadet uniform, despite being approved for his height and weight, it just spread out instead of concentrated, so he had a larger belly than anyone really approved of. It wasn’t as if it was something he chose to have, he was careful with what he ate, he didn’t eat empty calories, he was just a larger than usual guy.

He was smart and quiet. No one liked that combination. If Lance wasn’t teasing him about it (well meaning as it was), Griffin was sneering, others were staring -- especially when he answered questions in class.

Eventually he stopped answering questions.

He attempted reaching out but, everyone seemed so far away...why bother?

So he retreated into his own little space with his books and his school work and preparing for the tests that were to come because they were going to be the next generation of elite astroexplorers, there were going to be tests galore!

….then Lance dragged him out to get to know their comms specialist, Pidge, saying they needed a man’s night out, and...well, much as Hunk was terrified of being out, he was more terrified of losing his only friend. So, he followed.

Lance was the light in his life, after all. Even if it was a cracked and tarnished light, it was still a light, one he would always find himself drawn towards.

No one could have anticipated that would lead to them becoming the Paladins of Voltron. That he would be a leg, a support for the team, lifting them up. It was as if that was all he was meant to do, and...well, he’d done that before, he could do it again. Much like Lance, he had his own mask he wore, and he wore it so well no one thought twice about it.

When he was afraid, when it was really bad, he let them know -- and often got teased about it, but they helped him. And slowly, he started to trust them more, thinking that maybe, just maybe, this could be his new family. They were all trapped in space together, after all.

Pidge was another light in his life, bright and hot but distracted and determined to find her family. He wanted to help her do that, wanted to make sure she made it to them in one piece. So he helped her work when he could, when it was something in his realm, given she was a coder and he was more on the physical, visible side of things.

Keith wanted to find out more about himself. Hunk could understand that to an extent -- he wanted to know why he himself was so fucked up that all he could do was focus on other people, but that was for another time. He wanted to help Keith. But Keith...Keith was a fierce light that hurt anyone that got too close. It wasn’t even intentional, but after one attempted outside of training spar, Hunk had gotten the message and stayed away.

Lance, as ever, was a tarnished light, but the longer they were on the castleship, the longer they were Paladins, the longer their relationships bloomed between one another, the less tarnished it became and the more bright it was. It was still a little broken, but it was good -- and the light coming from Allura, from the Princess of the Alteans, seemed to compliment it nicely. Very nicely.

Allura herself was...weird. She wasn’t human, but that was okay. Turned out, Keith wasn’t human either. He was half Galra, and that was fine. They were all fine, all good and lovely people, amazing people that could do amazing things. Allura could open wormholes so that space travel didn’t take so long.

Someday, they could go home. When it was safe. Right then, they couldn’t. It wasn’t safe, the Galra would follow them and put their families in danger.

That was something Shiro said often, reminding them there was more at stake than their homesickness. There was a firmness to Shiro’s eyes that made Hunk think...surely that was a mask as well. They all were wearing masks, but some never took them down, some never showed the person beneath, and Shiro was one of those people.

Hunk wanted to see what was beneath.

He never did.

So many things happened, and they met so many people, including the Prince that would be Emperor of the Galra peoples. They saw an alternate dimension, they saw so many different possibilities, and eventually they returned home because they needed to, needed somewhere to rebuild from only to find that the war had beaten them to their home.

They had to save their home.

They had to.

As their Lions pushed upwards, trying to force the robeast Honerva had likely sent their way further away from the atmosphere, breaking away from the formation.

Yellow was the color of compassion, of helping and supporting the rest of the team.

Yellow was the color of the one who would do anything to protect his team.

Yellow was all Hunk could feel and see and smell as he pressed his way upward and away from the others, even with their voices in his ears.

He saw what would come -- what he hoped would come, that Shiro and Keith would be happy, maybe even with the guy with the glasses who had been walking with a cane and waiting for them, complete with tearful reunion for Shiro.

Lance and Allura and Lotor had something going on between them and all he knew was both Alteans (well, half Altean for Lotor) would take care of his best friend, and make sure he was happy with the rest of his life.

Pidge had her family and that cute little pilot that was...she was really literal, Hunk remembered her from before they left Earth. She would be good to Pidge.

His family...would be sad, but they’d move on.

They all would.

Closing his eyes, he pushed everything into the controls as the robeast exploded, almost instantly going from overexposure to nothing.

There was nothing.

He was nothing.

**_“Hunk!”_ **

* * *

 

Unfortunately for him, he’d been wrong about almost everything.

There was no joy in his passing, no revelations of the heart, nothing like what happens in the movies.

Instead there was Shiro, uncaring about getting his uniform dirty with tears in his eyes as he carefully pulled Hunk out of the cockpit, taking him out to the rest of the team, who all openly sobbed -- even Keith, though he was more subdued than the others.

His family grieved harder -- they had thought their son gone, had gotten proof he had lived and they had gotten close to seeing him once more only to come free from Galra rule to a corpse.

Voltron was missing a leg, and even finding a replacement for the Lion would never find a replacement for him in their hearts.

* * *

 

It wasn’t until after that they found the notes Hunk had kept, safe in his Lion where no one would see. No one except for the next pilot of the Yellow Lion, one Ryan Kinkade. He was quiet, strong, supportive in his own way, but when he found what remained of Hunk’s life...it felt wrong to look at it.

Handing it over to his new teammates seemed to be what caused the dam to break, and tears were flowing once again. But this time...the tears were sorrow mixed with bittersweet happiness. The notes, almost a journal aside from the fact it was kept in a folder rather than one single book, detailed all of the good things he saw in his teammates, in his allies.

How much he loved them all, how much he wanted to keep them all safe.

How little he valued himself.

How much he wanted to take his life, and...in the end, he was able to do just that, if in a way that helped others rather than how he had planned.

How ironic it was that his own death had prevented his active suicide.

It was hard to determine which was worse. They didn’t even try, instead doing their best to try to move on, to honor Hunk’s memory.

To honor what he had thought of them all, to do as much good as they could.

Because he never would.


End file.
